All posts tagged PSY

Kim Kardashian may have tried to break the internet but K-pop star Psy has come the closest.

Since his breakout hit “Gangnam Style” debuted in July 2012, it has become the most watched video on YouTube to date, scoring over 2.1 billion (that’s billion with a ‘b’) views. While this feat is staggering in itself, Google posted a nugget on YouTube’s Google+ page on Monday about this accomplishment, saying that it’s been viewed so many times they’ve been required to “upgrade” the video site’s backend. When YouTube was first designed, it was never expected for a video to exceed 2,147,483,647 views because of how the counter software was originally coded. “It’s like a car odometer,” says YouTube spokesperson Matt McLernon. “Once it rolls over the last nine, it resets.” He said the company thought 2 billion would be enough and it wasn’t.

Exactly how did Google know they were in need of an upgrade? Read More »

Rappers Psy and Snoop Dogg have a hit with their new duet “Hangover.” But the pair told Jimmy Kimmel they shot the video for the song on such a tight schedule that they had no time to “hang out,” relax and share a drink, much less get hung over together.

But the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” host had the answer. He called his mother, who hauled her son and his guests to a karaoke bar, where they appeared to surprise patrons with a number of performances including a rendition of the 1985 classic “That’s What Friends Are For.” Read More »

Two days ago, the YouTube-crushing K-Pop superstar that we know as PSY trolled his Twitter followers with a selfie showing him in a plane, with the tagline “on my way to NYC.” So where was he heading, exactly?

The answer: A star-studded gala gathering at the Museum of Modern Art, hosted by one of Korea’s biggest conglomerates, The CJ Group, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Though CJ began as the food and food services arm of Samsung Group (the CEO of Samsung, Lee Kun-Hee, is the estranged younger brother of former CJ Group president Lee Maeng-Hee), it leveraged its dominance in the manufacturing of sugar and flour into an array of other categories, from pharmaceuticals to packaged goods to banking and finance. In 1995, CJ launched an entertainment division — now the largest cinema and filmed entertainment company in Korea. At last night’s event, CJ E&M (“Entertainment and Media”) announced the donation of 10 of its classic films to MOMA’s cinema library, including masterpieces by Bong Joon-Ho (“The Host”) and Park Chan-Wook (“Oldboy”), and screened two works by rising filmmakers whose talents they helped to foster, “End of Animal” director Cho Sung-Hee, and Moon Byoung Gon, whose short film “Safe” was awarded the Palm d’Or at Cannes for Short Film. Read More »

The Norwegian comedy duo that has drilled the question “what does the fox say?” into the heads of millions of people worldwide with the YouTube hit “The Fox” is now looking to cash in on its enormous success.

The Ylvis brothers have filed a trademark for the phrase “what does the fox say” and an accompanying logo with Norwegian patent authorities, and hope to eventually start peddling a variety of tchotchkes ranging from t-shirts to Christmas ornaments.

The move comes just as “The Fox” eclipsed the 100 million view mark on Youtube. The song, featuring a guy wearing a fox suit singing “wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow,” took 35 days to hit 100 million, or 16 days fewer than Korean rapper Psy’s ultra-successful “Gangnam Style.”

However, Psy still holds the record on reaching 100 million views fastest. “Gentleman,” Psy’s follow-up to “Gangnam Style,” took just four days before it reached 100 million views.

In a statement published on TV Norige, the national Norwegian television that runs an Ylvis television show, Vegard Ylvisåker – one of the brothers – made light of the milestone. “Wow,” he said. “That’s the same as a billion.”

“The Fox” has also climbed to the eight position on the Billboard Hot 100 ranking, the weekly singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine which ranks tunes based on radio play and sales. Read More »

A video of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers dancing to K-Pop superstar PSY‘s globe-spanning hit “Gangnam Style” has gone viral — primarily because of the location where the, er, horseplay took place: At a Palestinian hotspot in Hebron known to be frequented by the Jabari, a clan closely linked to Hamas.

According to Israel’s Channel 2, the soldiers, belonging to the Rotem battalion of the elite Givati Brigade, reportedly heard the unmistakable strains of the song coming from an alleyway and left patrol to investigate. Discovering the party in progress, they decided to join in, despite being dressed in full combat gear — flak vests, fatigues and helmets — and carrying their Tavor TAR-21 assault rifles.

The Palestinians, who were in the process of celebrating a wedding, apparently chose to welcome the soldiers into the throng, laughingly embracing them and even hoisting one of them up on their shoulders. An onlooker captured the event with a smartphone and posted it to Al-Fajer TV, a Palestinian news site, where it quickly spread across the Middle East blogosphere and, upon being aired on Israeli television, around the world. Read More »

Live! From living rooms in New York and New Jersey! It’s Speakeasy’s “Dancing with the Stars” live-blog finale.

After a competitive Monday show, only one point separates Zendaya and Val Chmerkovskiy from Kellie Pickler and Derek Hough. Aly Raisman and Mark Ballas seem to be solidly in third place, while Jacoby Jones and Karina Smirnoff look to be the fourth-place team for sure unless they have a huge surge in audience backing. The first elimination should be announced at the halfway mark of the show, and then we have one more routine for the three remaining couples: an insta-dance. We also have oodles and oodles of filler, returning stars and pros, and singing from Wynonna and Psy. The man behind “Gangnam Style” has a second song???

Our bloggers for this evening’s festivities reflect a range of “DWTS” experience. I’ve been a regular watcher since Season 2 and have recapped for Speakeasy for four seasons. Kerry Grace Benn, also a longtime viewer, has served as a blog contributor for the past couple of seasons and filled in on some recaps this spring. Our colleague Nate Becker, however, comes to the dance party pretty green. He’s watched five-minute snippets here and there, and he knows Aly is on, but that’s about it. [It’s like] “I just got off a spaceship from Mars,” Nate says. “What is this?” So if you’re the kind of viewer who is puzzled at what makes a rumba good or what Bruno Tonioli is saying – OK, that’s a lot of us – then Nate represents you.

We want to hear your voices, too! Add your thoughts in the comments section throughout the evening.

Just three days after its release, PSY’s followup to his record-smashing YouTube hit “Gangnam Style,” an anthem to gleeful malice with the ironic title “Gentleman,” has astonishingly set a pace that, if maintained, would rocket it past its predecessor’s one billion viewings in less than a half of the time.

The video currently has 92 million views, having been watched 50 million times in just its first 24 hours — a total that vaporized the previous record of 8 million held by fellow Scooter Braun client Justin Bieber for the May 3 release of his video for “Boyfriend.”

But what’s truly remarkable is that if “Gentleman” simply tracks the growth rate of “Gangnam,” it will take over the all-time record in a little over a month, and hurdle 4 billion in 45 days. And in just 75 days, “Gentleman” would project out as hitting 12.6 billion views.Read More »

He’s baaaaack. At 6:30 pm Seoul time (5:30 am this morning Eastern), in front of a raucous crowd of over 50,000 people at Seoul’s Sangam stadium, Park Jae-Song, the rotund rap raconteur better known as PSY, unveiled the music video for his new single “Gentleman,” the followup to his implausible worldwide hit “Gangnam Style.”

And if you liked the latter, you’ll probably enjoy PSY’s second helping, which methodically retraces the steps that turned him into Korea’s most infectious cultural export.

It features the singer wandering through a surreal version of Seoul’s most upmarket and downscale locales, encountering much of the Gangnam gang, including popular TV hosts Yoo Jae-Seok — PSY’s “yellow suit guy” nemesis from the first video — and Noh Hong-Chul, A.K.A. “elevator guy.” (The former has arguably the funniest appearance in “Gentleman,” while the latter makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo, doing his signature pelvic thrusts, in the background of another scene.) Read More »

In April, 12-year-old Torontonian Jorel Hoffert is poised to cross the threshold to manhood — and to announce this signal event, he conscripted his parents and grandparents to make a truly mind-blowing video invitation, which has to be seen to be believed (and beloved).

The video features young Hoffert throwing down serious East-West swag: Crooning a reskinned “Bohemian Rhapsody,” showing off serious air-guitar and actual-piano chops, and finishing off with an epic Gangnam-style finale. And the lyrics are hilarious, with lines like “I’m half a Jew/Learned Hebrew/I’m half Asian and proud of that too.” Over-the-top bar mitzvah videos have become a thing (see: Shaun Sperling, Daniel Blumen), but this one should have ended with a mic drop.

“We were just trying to do something fun and different,” says Jorel’s father, David Hoffert. “So we thought, ‘Hey, let’s make the invitation a music video, no one’s ever done that before!’ How little we knew.”

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.